Australian GP: Lotus heading in the right direction - Grosjean

Having struggled through a difficult pre-season, expectations for the Enstone squad were low heading to Melbourne, with both Grosjean and team-mate Pastor Maldonado revealing after qualifying that new issues were being faced all the time.

However, both cars managed to run reasonably deep into the race, Maldonado getting to lap 29 before suffering an MGU-K failure, while Grosjean managed another 15 laps before his E22 was hit with an identical problem.

Despite the double retirement, the Frenchman was upbeat after the race.

"We have to see the positives, and 44 laps was very useful for all of us, for the car, for the engineers, for myself," he told NBC Sports. "OK, it's bad to retire, but at least we got some good data and we can move forward.

"We learnt more today than we did in the whole [of] winter testing, and it was the first time I could drive a car which was doing the same thing in every corner. It's good that the guys have been working hard to get some updates.

"We've still got a long way to go, but you have to see the positives, and the changes we did were in the right direction."

Maldonado agreed that the race exceeded expectations.

"For sure [it was] something positive, both cars we were running for quite long during the race and [that is] quite important, we have not been able to put 20 laps together in the past.

"We need to keep pushing, we had a problem with the engine, but at the same time we need to work, we need to stay together and to do our best."